McCotter joins crowded GOP presidential field

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Waterford, White Lake, Highland, Milford, Commerce, Wolverine Lake, Walled, Wixom) is bucking skeptics who think he doesn’t have the name recognition or fund-raising abilities to be a serious candidate for the U.S. presidency, and is throwing his hat into the ring for the GOP nod.

McCotter, first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002, made his presidential campaign official on Saturday, July 2, after filing paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) the day before.

The five-term Congressman joins a crowded Republican presidential field in which former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is considered the front-runner for the GOP nod.

“There is still room for another message, another candidate,” McCotter said in an interview with the Spinal Column Newsweekly yesterday, Tuesday, July 5.

The most recent campaign finance report filed with the FEC, dated May 18, shows McCotter’s Congressional Committee had a total of $478,780 in cash on hand and had raised a total of $32,920 this election cycle.

“That’s why we have campaigns,” he said, adding that social networking — like in the successful Obama 2008 campaign — will play a role in his run for the White House. “Too many people make the mistake of putting money before the message.”

Defending his support of the federal government’s intervention in the auto industry, McCotter said that “we have to be a nation that produces wealth. We have to manufacture, we have to farm.”

Also raising the issues of Iran and China, as well as what he called “the intrusion of federal judges and bureaucrats” into people’s daily lives, McCotter said that 14 million unemployed nationally and a lack of credit flowing in the economy are top priorities in his campaign.

McCotter joins former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the Republican field of candidates.